It seems weird, but lately I hear more and more conservatives shriek rather than argue. I know-- sounds unfair to say that, doesn't it? But it's true. Many of them, like Anne Coulter and Debra Burlingame and Charles Krauthammer, seem to have gone crazy. Maybe it's their dim awareness's of the waning of the Bush era, and the indisputable disasters that will be attributed to his conservative policies-- Iraq, the deficit, the trade deficit, global warming, Katrina-- as they bear fruit in the next few years. Maybe it's part of the character of extreme conservatism : truth is handed down from on high, to authorities, to be imposed upon the rabble. It is not something that arises from the merry marketplace of diversity and debate and a multiplicity of experiences and beliefs.
Freedom to be Different...but not too different.
The museum, the "International Freedom Centre", is out. Gone. Excluded. Rejected. Dismissed. Because it would not guarantee that, located as it were, in a monument to American freedom, democracy, and liberty, it would only ever pander to and praise those patriotic values espoused by the paragons of virtue, Tom Delay, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and his fellow Republicans.
Yes, Governor Pataki put the fix in, not only for the museum, but for every occupant of the new building, who must now pass a litmus test of political Republican orthodoxy before being allowed in. Naturally, some of the tenants have declined to give enlightened people like Bill Frist or Donald Rumsveld a veto over what sort of speech should be permitted there. The Republicans, you see, identify mindless obedient conformity with true "patriotism".
A patriot does not stand for freedom of speech.
Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles, a pilot of one of the 9/11 planes, had screeched that she must be the one who decides what may or may not go into the new World Trade Centre because anyone who disagrees with her shrill views on the meaning of 9/11 just isn't American like her, even if they too lost relatives in 9/11.
This is so ridiculous, and repulsive, and absurd that it strains credulity, as they say. The monument to American freedom must be unfree, and cowards who cannot abide the slightest dissidence must control the design of a monument to courage, and puritanical Republican harpies must control the expression of democracy.
Copyright © 2005 Bill Van Dyk All rights reserved.
Here is what Debra Burlingame and Governor Pataki and Anne Coulter would deny you: freedom to consider both sides of the issue-- a link to a website with eloquent discussion of the issue.
